


I’ve Got the Spirit (But Lose the Feeling)

by electricchicken



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Hint of Simon/Kieren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:59:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/electricchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>These sensations barely interest me for another day,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I've got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Or: 5 Times Simon Monroe experimented with drugs, post-mortem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I’ve Got the Spirit (But Lose the Feeling)

 

**I.**

Neurotiptyline B is clear, save a faint yellow tone where the light hits. It lasts six hours before Simon’s hands start to shake and black bile rises in his throat. They dose him with a regular course and he spends the night cuffed to his hospital bed, straining against padded restraints and trying to shake the tremors out through his fingertips.

Formula C is murky, cloudy particles swimming in solution. John gives the shot himself. Simon remembers smears of light and high pitched beeping and not much else. 

The fifth formula he could mistake for regular neurotriptyline, if it didn’t burn going in. John will tell him later his pain receptors lit up like Christmas on the scanners. They tinker with that one two weeks before they move on to the next. “Ministry can’t sell screams,” Halperin says, and Simon’s not sure why it sounds like a joke.

He sleeps near 12 hours on the last dose they try him on. Simon dreams of red lights and shadows. The first and the last. _Behold_.

 

**II.**

Norfolk gives him back the clothes he died in but not his bank details. His father’s no more helpful, no banknotes in the rucksack shoved in his arms. 

The watch they buried him in isn’t bad, though. Fetches enough at the pawn shop for what he’s after, even if the price drops ten quid when the broker narrows his eyes, asks “PDS?”

The heroin is easy. Five years and the Rising, but the business of getting high hasn’t changed much. The HVF armband pinned to the camo coat gives Simon a moment’s pause, but if the man wearing them knows what he is, he’s not one to dwell on the irony. It’s almost worse buying the lighter at the corner shop.

Finding a vein’s easy too, maybe more so than before. Black blood, white skin, he could mistake himself for a road map in the flat yellow light of the underpass. Simon lines the needle up, tries to gauge whether he’s loaded the syringe with more or less than what killed him the first time round. Worse ways to go again than nodding off against concrete. Gentler than a bullet to the head. Would almost be worth it for a quiet mind, for peace. 

 _And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,  
_ _Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings._

Would almost be worth it to get Yeats out of his head.

Simon presses the plunger down and waits.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there fooling himself, waiting for the release. Can’t keep time without a watch.

 

**III.**

The other disciples lock the doors and take their seats around the edges of the room. Eleven sets of eyes on him, white turning pink with the sunset spilling in through broken glass. They speak in murmurs, words overlapping in waves. _The first and the last_. _Alive for ever more._

Simon thinks _baptism_ , scratches that out, thinks of too-short suit pants and a too-tight tie and the drone of the bishop’s voice at confirmation mass, fingers against his forehead felt through a fog. What had he taken before that initiation rite? Pills, he thinks. Hard to remember a literal lifetime ago. 

This suit’s better cut. Nicer than he’d have picked out. A few more nerve endings and the fabric so close to skin would have him on edge, but half dead the confinement’s manageable, nothing he can’t distract from with a drum of fingers against his thigh, a rattle of the pill against its wee glass bottle.

And so long as he doesn’t mind a crooked tie, it’s not so hard to hide the blood stains.

The dust inside the pill is a bright, candy-coloured blue and even knowing better Simon’s expecting it to burn going up his nose. Habit has him rubbing the residue into his gums when the rush overtakes him and bile spatters his palms and the hush of voices at the edges of the room hits a crescendo.

 _Rise_ , it sounds like. _Rise._

 

**IV.**

The ULA’s neurotriptyline shots look like strong tea and make Simon’s brain feel too large for his head the first three weeks. 

He can handle the pressure on his skull. It’s the flashbacks he doesn’t so much like.

His mother he sees near every shot for a month. His father only shows up once. Simon remembers footsteps on the stairs, harsh breathing and the thump of a crossbow bolt hitting the wall above his head. Crying too hard to aim. Only thing that saved him.

Simon’s almost glad to go back to visions of blood.

 

 **V.**  

He waves off the plastic container, but Amy’s insistent. 

“We’re letting our hair down,” she tells him, not for the first time. Her fingers tuck into the pocket of his suit jacket, and Simon loops an arm around her in kind, if only to keep them from stumbling. 

“Looks like yours is down already.” 

“Just have a bite,” she leans her head on his shoulder, can’t manage the pout she’s after for smiling. “Teeny weeny eeny meeny bite. For me?”

“Alright, alright,” the piece of sheep's brain he picks out is barely a mouthful, but he makes a show of chewing and swallowing. “You’ve worn me down.”

She wraps her other arm around him and he registers pressure against his cheek, if not the feel of her lips. “You need to relax.”

“I will,” Simon catches her shoulders, eases her back a step. Her hands are still at his waist, tub of brains dangling precarious from her fingers. Parody of a slow dance that doesn’t fit the music. Simon tries to remember whether he’d ever done the stiff-armed shuffle in real life, or only seen it on television. “Go on now, spread the wealth. I don’t think Henry Lonsdale’s had the pleasure of our hospitality.”

“Alright, alright.” Is she — yes, that’s certainly mockery. She beams at him, takes one of his hands in hers and spins herself away as though they’re really dancing and Simon has any idea what he’s doing. 

He ends up by the fireside. Rising stories aren't likely to fall under Amy’s particular definition of relaxation, but there’s a ritual to it he’s come to enjoy. Almost call and response. _What do you remember? What did you see? Who was with you?_

“He was there when I rose.” The man at the fire points, and the flames lick upwards into the darkness, and the sheep’s brains must have been more potent than he’d expected because Simon could almost fool himself into believing he can feel warmth on his hands and face.

On the other side of the blaze Kieren Walker’s lips turn down in a faint, puzzled frown.

“Really?” Simon hears himself say.

“I remember the denim jacket.”

“Remember me from where?” Kieren calls.

“You came?” His face still feels warm. Strange sensation. When he stands he’s half expecting a head rush, as though he’s gone through too many pints in a single sitting.

“Yep.”

Smile on his face feels like it’s spreading and going soft without his say so. Sheep’s brains, eh? All this time and he never would have guessed it. Sensation’s not like what he’s missed, but there’s something to be said for the the way his brain feels lit up, the laughter curling in his belly.  With what she’s eaten, it’s a wonder Amy’s still moving under her own power. 

He’ll have to remember this.

“I’m glad,” he says and it’s amazingly, astonishingly true. 

Sheep’s brains. Who would have thought?

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fireside dialogue entirely the work of lovely ITF creator Dominic Mitchell, whose [episode two script](http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/in-the-flesh-series2-ep2.pdf) I crutched hard on for that whole final scene.
> 
> Mr. Mitchell I, ah, hope you're not reading this but if you are well done! Good stuff. Nice work with the, er, the zombies and all.


End file.
